New Years Resolutions

I got started on two New Year's resolutions this week:
--I finally found a music book I'd been looking for: "Jazz Hanon" (you pianists and former piano students out there probably remember Hanon . . . finger exercises!) I'm going to get serious again about improving my piano technique and theory, specifically in jazz, so I started practicing from the book this week.
--I've been working on memorizing katakana, the writing system used in Japanese to transliterate foreign words. It's also sometimes used in a way similar to the English usage of italics. I'm over half done with that. Also, I ordered a book that just arrived today. It teaches kanji, the last (and most difficult!) writing system that I need to learn to be able to read Japanese. It's the system of characters originally borrowed from Chinese. I'm planning to start that this weekend.

And for anybody who hasn't already heard, recently I was officially invited to return for a second year of teaching at UICS, and I accepted the offer, so I will start the 2008-2009 school year in April.

Snow In Utsunomiya

A couple of weeks ago very light snow fell for a few minutes, but this morning we had our first snow that stayed on the ground. Only for a few hours, but it did stay. Here is a short video that I took this morning, the first one that I've posted on YouTube for a while:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DQ7Y-HuMP0

Comments?

I just enabled the comments feature on this blog, so now you should be able to send me comments/messages directly through this site. I have at least one friend who was worried about accidentally posting comments; fear not! I have the moderation feature turned on, so I will see the messages before they're posted, and if you accidentally send something you didn't mean to, just send me a second message telling me what to delete, and I will (unless I think it's really funny, and then maybe I'll post it anyway---JUST KIDDING!).

Crispy crunchy chickeny chippy

I've seen some flavors of snack foods in Japan that are very strange by American standards including consommé flavored popcorn and curry flavored, well, just about anything curry flavored (even donuts---no, I'm not joking).

When I saw this in the store the other day, I had to buy it! "Fried chicken taste" chips. Okay, I'm opening it right now . . . it tastes... WOW!!!!!! It's pretty good! I can't say it tastes exactly like fried chicken, but it's pretty close!

Hmm....maybe I should make a regular feature on unusual foods in Japan. Well, we'll see . . .

Back In Utsunomiya

I had a fantastic trip visiting family and friends in the U.S. Here are just a couple of quick pictures, and hopefully I'll get a more complete trip account posted soon.





I took the train from my city to Tokyo and then on to Narita near the airport. My friends Mondo & Aiko met me and we visited Narita temple, had lunch together, and hung out until my plane left. The first picture is Mondo and Aiko standing in front of the main entrance to Narita temple.








One of the things I love about my city Portland, Oregon is all the beautiful lights at Christmas (and at other times too, actually). This is a photo of an old Victorian style house that is decorated with 1,000,000 lights every Christmas (yes, really-one million!).










The second half of my vacation was spent in San Jose, California with family including my cousins and their families and my uncle & aunt. The first and last days I spent there, the weather was fantastic--unfortunately, an Alaskan storm front arrived the day after I did, but that's another story... This is the sunset the FIRST day I was there.

More later . . .

Happy New Year!

This is my first post from America since . . . well . . . March, I think! I'm in the States now on vacation enjoying some time with friends and family. I spent the first 1/3 in Eugene, Oregon; the second 1/3 in Portland, Oregon; and I leave for the final 1/3 in San Jose, California tomorrow morning. Thanks for everybody who hosted me, and sorry that I couldn't see everybody in Portland that I wanted to.

Happy New Year / ake mashite omedetou gozaimasu!
and God's blessings for the new year!

Merry Christmas! Happy Birthday Jesus!

Merry Christmas!
I managed to get a picture of Santa and Rudolph on my recent trip to the North Pole. (If you look at Santa carefully, he might look a little familiar . . . )

I leave for my vacation in the States tomorrow --I'll see some of you soon!

Christmas plans and Utsunomiya Central Park

Just a quick note--many of you have already heard my vacation schedule, but probably not everyone, so here it is:
--arriving in Oregon December 24th; staying with my family in Eugene/Springfield
--traveling to Portland on December 29th; staying with ???? (anybody want to host me?)
--traveling to California on January 2nd; staying with family in San Jose
--returning to Japan on January 8th

The three pictures are from a walk I took a few weeks ago in Utsunomiya's Central Park. The leaves were just starting to change color at that point. Fall seems to come later here than in Oregon, but when the weather changed, it cooled off very quickly. The days now are in the mid 50s, mostly sunny, and the nights are quite cold.

Guests part seven

Our last day in Nagano we spent the morning at Zenko-ji Temple. It is very important both to the culture and history of Japan, and is a very impressive site. Because of the large number of buildings in a fairly small area, it was difficult to take any pictures that show the scale of the grounds. The first picture, taken from one of the main temples with other buildings in the background, is as close as I could get to showing the size of the site. If you want more information, Wikipedia has a good entry on Zenko-ji.




Besides all the umbrellas (the rain wasn't really that bad-by Oregon standards it was just sprinkling), in the second picture you can see the incense burner where people sometimes stand in the smoke and rub it on themselves in hope of a blessing.




In the final picture, you can see priests performing a ceremony. It was very fascinating to watch, but it reminded me of the difference between religion -- rituals that try to reach god(s) -- and faith -- relationship with the God who reaches to us.




That's my (relatively) short summary of our travels; Randy, Diane, and Paige, thanks again for a fantastic experience together!

Guests part six

On the day we visited Happo-One, we also traveled to the Sea of Japan/East Sea. The closest large city in the area we visited is called Joetsu, if you want to check a map.



It was a beautiful, clear, warm day, and as you can see in the picture, Diane and Paige enjoyed the warm water. It wasn't quite "Hawaii-warm", but I was surprised at how nice the water was, considering it was October.

Guests part five: Nagano and Hakuba

I've got to get my posts from the end of the summer done so I can catch up to fall before winter starts! . . . so here's the next part:

Continuing from last time; our last big trip before my brother and his family went home was Nagano, Hakuba, and Happo-One (pronounced "hah-poh-oh-nay") which hosted the Winter Olympics in 1998.

The city of Nagano is not extremely large (the population is about 400 thousand) but it seems to have a lot of personality. My included picture of the area near our hotel doesn't really do it justice; it was fun to walk around that neighborhood and get a feel for the character of the city. We had a fantastic dinner in a wonderful restaurant there that had traditional "horigotatsu" seating (seating arrangements on Japanese tatami floors where there are sunken areas beneath the dining tables for comfortable leg room).

Hakuba and Happo-One are in the mountains near Nagano. The architecture looked like pictures of Switzerland that I've seen--it was truly a beautiful place. We rode the gondola part of the way up the mountain, and the third picture I included was taken there.

Last week I went back to Hakuba with my school for a conference, but that will have to be in a different post.

My latest guests, part four

Continuing from part three:

Before we entered NijoJo, a friendly-looking man approached us on the street as we were walking. After showing his "credentials" (an article in the local newspaper about his art), he asked if we'd like to come to his studio, see him work, and learn about his artwork. We were intrigued, so after leaving the castle, we walked to the address on his business card (easier said than done-see my previous blog entry about finding addresses in Japan!) and received a warm greeting at his studio/house.

In brief, he paints on silk to create family crests that are incorporated into kimonos. The name for family crest in Japanese is "kamon" (see Wikipedia for more information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamon). It was absolutely remarkable to watch him painting these intricate designs, mostly by hand. For the basic outline, a stencil is occasionally used, and for geometric patterns, a compass is used, but all of the fine detail is done manually. As you can hopefully see in the close-up picture, each pattern is exactly the same. The amount of practice (and patience!) required is astonishing.

In one of the pictures you can see some of the kamon in color and the pattern book for the designs. There are thousands of designs and the artist, Toshio Kashima, has a couple hundred committed entirely to memory.

After enjoying his demonstration, when we told him our plans for the rest of the day, he offered to give us a ride up the hill to the Kiyomizu Temple (from my previous post). On the way, he gave us a mini-tour of that area of Kyoto. He is an amazing artist and a kind and gracious host. Kashima-san, doumo arigatou gozaimashita!

And now for something completely different...

"We interrupt our regularly scheduled program to bring you this special feature"




One of my conversation class students, Tamami, often brings her very entertaining cat, Kewpie, to class with her. As you can see from the pictures, she is NOT a small cat! Kewpie likes to hang out while we're having our lesson. She wanders around the room, chases dust bunnies, and jumps on the furniture, making a loud *THUMP* sound (she's one of the noisiest cats I've ever met, which makes her even funnier). Tamami, thanks for bringing Kewpie; maybe someday she'll learn to meow in English!

My latest guests, part three

Two other places we visited in Kyoto are NijoJo (Nijo Castle) and part of the grounds of Kiyomizu Temple, two of the most famous sites in the area.

Nijo Castle was built in the early 1600s during Japan's feudal period. If you want more history, go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nijo_Castle but I'll quote one short section:

One of the most striking features of Nijō Castle are the "nightingale floors" in the corridors. To protect the occupants from sneak attacks and assassins, the builders constructed the floors of the corridors in such a way as to squeak like birds when anyone walks on them.

After walking through that section and listening to the interesting sounds of the "security system floor", my brother commented that it was amazing workmanship that 400 years later the intricately constructed floor was still functioning exactly as it was designed to.

Surrounding the castle, there is a series of gardens and pathways. Walking around on the grounds and seeing the gardens with the castle in the background was as beautiful as touring the building itself.

Later, we went to Kiyomizu Temple. Unfortunately, we got there just about 15 minutes before the grounds closed, but we saw as much as we could in the short time we had, and then continued looking around from outside the area that had been roped off. We could still see quite a bit of the temple complex from there, and I continued to take pictures.

All of the pictures I'm including in this post were stitched together from multiple photos, which is why they have a long, panorama perspective.

My latest guests, part two

Our first destination after Asakusa in Tokyo was Kyoto. Kyoto is an amazing city-a very interesting combination of very old and very modern. That can be said of many places in Japan, but it's especially apparent in Kyoto.

We arrived by shinkansen (bullet train) at the first example of very modern: the station. It's actually a huge complex of buildings that includes all the train platforms, many restaurants, a mall, and the hotel where we stayed. It's one of those places that's difficult to photograph, but I'll include one picture I took to give a little idea of the inside of the building. Click on the picture to open a larger version, and then zoom in on the upper part-a series (five, I think) of long escalators heads outside of the building.

For an example of the very old aspect of the city, I included a picture of Gion, which is a beautiful district of temples, shops and restaurants, partly along a small canal.

More later...

A month?! (my latest guests, part one)

It's completely beyond me how it's been a month since I last updated (that's probably one of the tritest things you'll read on several thousand blogs all over the world, so enough of that).

My brother (Randy), his wife (Diane), and granddaughter (Paige) visited earlier this month. Everywhere I visited with them was amazing; we had a great time! The list of destinations: Tokyo (including Ueno Park and Asakusa), Kyoto, Nikko, Nagano City, the Sea of Japan near Joetsu, and Hakuba/Happo One (pronounced "hah-poh-oh-nay" -the city where many events were held during the '98 Olympics).

I'll start with just a couple of pictures. The first one is a group picture on top of a hill at Nijo-jo in Kyoto. It's a traditional Japanese castle with a lot of historical and cultural significance. I'll include more pictures of it in another post. The second picture is Diane and Paige in Asakusa. They had a great time touring the district on their rickshaw ride. BTW, our English word rickshaw comes from the Japanese word "jinrikisha" 人力車, 人 jin = human, 力 riki = strength, 車 sha = vehicle, which means "human-powered vehicle". (If you see random letters or squares instead of Japanese characters in the previous sentence, just ignore it; it means your computer isn't set up to read Japanese.)

I'm going to split their visit into several posts.

Parque España (aka "Supein Mura")

The day after we went to Inuyama, we took a train south into Mie Ken (Mie Prefecture). It was very beautiful, and even if it was kind of crazy to go two hours far out of our way just to visit an amusement park, even the train ride there was great! Again, Jane's words are in blue:

The next morning we left early for Parque España. The train went through more pretty scenery - more out in the country with hills and then getting to see the seashore again. We went through one little town where pearl diving is a big tourist draw. It looked like a neat place to visit. We got off at what our directions said was the correct station, only to be told by an employee at the station that we should have gotten off at the next one. We decided to go outside to the bus station, where a taxi driver told us where to wait for a bus. After a while a bus came by that was actually a shuttle bus for the hotel or park employees, but they asked us if we were customers and let us on. There were signs in Spanish on the bus. They let us off at the park and there was no charge for the bus! The park was SUPER COOL. We went on the cool rides we had read about, and also the silly ones that were still fun. The "brilliant sparkling luminous carnival" whatever it was called ride was indoors and you sat in a sideways car that went along and turned to face different scenes like Haunted Mansion at Disneyland, but everything was all sparkling lights with a flower & flamenco theme. The big coaster was awesome, and I lost track of all the inversions. It was also very smooth. It was a suspended coaster like the Batman Ride, and unlike some coasters, it had a couple really cool parts right at the very end rather than being anticlimactic. It looked like you were going to hit your feet on the ground at one point, and had a little zero-G hill, which I thought was unusual for a suspended coaster.

The mine train coaster had nice scenery

and was a lot faster than I expected. It was fun like Big Thunder Mountain Railway but with the speed cranked up several notches. Interwoven through it was the other
Montserrat-themed ride, the log flume ride. It was fun & not too wet. We went to the far end of the park where you walk quite a ways downhill through realistic Spanish village streets - they even had a little chapel and a wine shop. We went on the surprising long and good lagoon ride, and then discovered the “disco escalator” that Rob had read about in a park review: I wasn't looking forward to walking clear back up the long hill, but there is a very long indoor escalator that takes you back up to the main level of the park. There is fun, pseudo-Spanish music and loads of flashy lights, and if you look closely on the rock-looking walls they have a couple replicas of paintings - something Picasso-looking and a famous prehistoric cave drawing from Spain. The park also has a ride designed for looking at the view - something like Great America's giant donut tower, except the rotating big seating area is lifted up on a giant arm instead of going up a tower. It had a VERY nice view of the coastline and bay and Spanish-looking buildings and Spanish-looking hotel next door, and in the distance Japanese buildings - that part was a little surreal. Oh yeah, they even had a replica of the statue in the Plaza de Colon just like the real one.

This amusement park absolutely astounded me! It's one of the most fun parks I have ever visited. It's like Disneyland in that everything is impeccably themed (and the theming is actually, I think, more authentic looking than what is usually at a Disney park). BUT . . . it also has a couple of amazing thrill rides, like what you would find at a park like Magic Mountain. So I think it's the best of both worlds. Whatever you go to an amusement park for, they have it! AND, with almost no lines at all-we rarely waited more than five minutes to board anything and only waited more than ten minutes once: at the crazy bullfighting ring indoor roller coaster. That was truly a strange ride. It's an indoor coaster, something like SpaceMountain, but of course has a Spanish theme. Towards the end of the ride you enter a dark area, and the cars STOP. Suddenly, the lights turn on, and it looks like you're in the middle of a bullfighting ring; a trumpet fanfare plays, the cars start heading for a wall, and it opens, sending you into the final part of the ride. VERY creative (and strange!) The super roller coaster that Jane mentioned was SO intense, that even I (crazy roller coaster maniac!) could only go on it four times. One other note about the theming-there's a huge building that houses the area where stage shows are performed. Rather than just have the top of a big, ugly building in the middle of the park, they took the time to decorate it to look like Roman ruins! (You can see that in the long, panorama picture I posted.)

An absolutely fantastic park, but as I mentioned, not many people, so I'm afraid that if business doesn't increase, at some point it may close, which would be terrible for such an awesome park. So, anyone even slightly interested in amusement parks in Japan-please go and support their wonderful creation!

By the way, "Supein" means "Spain" in Japanese (if you didn't already know or figure that out), and "Mura" means village. The park is titled in Spanish and Japanese.

Inuyama and Ukai (Cormorant Fishing)

This is the next part of my sister's visit. She went to visit a friend in Osaka by herself for one day. The following day her friend Nancy and I took the shinkansen to Nagoya (about an hour closer to here) to meet her. Again, Jane's words are in blue.

I then proceeded to Nagoya station, where I arrived just a few minutes before Nancy & Rob were due so I was able to guess which train was theirs and meet them right on the platform. We went to our hotel where we were able to check in early. Rob had found a last-minute deal on a four-star hotel. The rooms we had were actually not very large but it was extremely clean with extremely comfortable beds and nightshirts provided. Then we set out for Inuyama where the ukai (cormorant fishing) is, about a half-hour train ride away. A big outdoor wooden map of the city at the station had north at the top, but you were facing south looking at it, so was glad I had my compass in my purse. Unfortunately the map also seemed to imply that we had to cross the river to get to the fishing area. We had well over an hour, and enjoyed a walk down a little street with very old buildings – it would be a cool place to spend a whole day or two. Finally, we got to the river, crossed it on a large dam, realized we were on the wrong side of the river and still had a long walk to get to the boat dock. I was pretty sure there was no way we were going to make it to the boat on time (we had a reservation). We got near the other bridge and started running and made it to the boat dock just in time, to my great relief. We boarded a long, low boat with tatami mats in it - they gave us plastic bags to put our shoes in while on the boat. We headed down the river and picked up several more passengers at a hotel downstream - Japanese tourists. It was lots of fun trying to converse with them. They were talking and laughing and kept asking Rob questions. One man kept making funny gestures, we weren't sure what he was trying to convey except part of it had to do with fishing or food, it was very amusing. The sun had set and we were below a castle up on a hill that they light up at night, and which I found out later is one of the oldest wooden castles in Japan (not one that has burned down and been rebuilt). The boat had a roof with paper lanterns with candles burning in them hanging down. The boat ride was so neat I thought that alone was worth the ticket price. Then we motored back upstream to where there were other spectator boats and the fisherman's boat came out. That was really amazing to watch. There were three men in the fisherman's boat and they had a fire burning in a big metal basket hanging over the water. They periodically pounded on the boat floor with a pole - not sure if that was to attract the fish or signal the birds. The actual fisherman had on traditional garb including a straw skirt (right next to the fire!) and had several birds on leashes, who just bobbed along swimming next to the boat and would periodically dive for fish. When the fisherman saw a bird had caught a fish, he would pull in the bird and make the bird spit out the fish into a basket and toss the bird back in the water, where it would bob along again like everything was fine. The birds are trained when they are young and live with the fisherman. The whole night-time scene with the fire reflecting in the water and everything really made it all extra amazing - was really one of those “had-to-be-there” experiences. I was really glad we got to see it. That style of fishing has been done for hundreds of years. It is no longer an economically feasible way to make a living, so the government sponsors it as an "intangible cultural asset".

As Jane said, the whole thing was completely amazing. When we were both children, our family had a book that described cormorant fishing. We both still remember the book, and I think Jane was inspired to arrange that part of our trip mostly because of that memory. That made the experience even more incredible. Sorry some of the pictures are rather dark, but hopefully you can get the idea (especially if you click on them for the larger size).

Next: Parque Espana!!!